Yes, the tariffs will be hitting harder in October, and harder still by the holidays as companies that are still selling out of pre-tariff stock run out and have to raise prices on new imports.
But the hurt for consumers has never been a consideration for Trump. High inflation and discontent over prices won’t be enough for him to drop them, if he has other statutes he can use.
It’s because tariffs for him are a power move on the global scene. A way to force leaders of other countries to bend to his will, and punish them when they don’t bend. Like the 50% tariff for India because Modi refuses to say that Trump ended the war between India and Pakistan and should have the Nobel Peace Prize (interesting article about that in today’s NYT). Or the 50% for Brazil because he’s trying to force the government to drop the prosecution of fellow authoritarian Bolsonaro. He’s going to do whatever he can to continue these moronic tariffs even while it sends us into a recession.
Mr. Trump famously remarked on how he loved the ‘lower-educated’. He thinks his supporters are ignorant and easily manipulable. He will offer them a pittance of a tax break while exacting huge taxes from them in the form of the tariffs. Regarding the above quote from your comment, I think the current effective level of tariffs (especially on China) are low enough that the shelves will not empty, but consumers should definitely see a slow but steady price rise.
The point is how much MAGA voters will care about this. If you look back at Mr. Trump’s campaign speeches, he constantly claimed that he would instantly lower prices, although virtually every single policy he proposed would be inflationary. I suspect that there is some level at which MAGA voters realized that Mr. Trump really couldn’t lower prices, but were still willing to accept Trump 2.0 as long as he put a sufficient hurting on the right people.
One step at a time. Since they didn’t enjoin the imposition of tariffs, the mechanics of ‘unwinding’ unlawful taxes collected would be so difficult as to be impossible. How to identify the full chain of costs passed on, let alone the ultimate payers… not at all sure it can be done. Especially for tariffs on manufacturing inputs like steel and aluminum. The courts might just end the tariffs going forward. Note there’s also no way of reversing the retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries. To my mind, the ‘harm’ courts are supposed to evaluate to decide whether to impose a stay is massive, and the tariffs should have been stayed, but what do I know.
One consideration for the court may have been that companies hate uncertainty more than anything else, especially those that place orders for imports months in advance. Staying the current tariffs with the possibility that SCOTUS would put them back in place could be worse for these companies than just keeping them in place for a couple more months.
Very true, but whether Trump has the legal ability to impose haphazard, YUGE ‘emergency’ tariffs is completely separate from the extent of the harm they do. And it seems the Supreme Court is so insulated from real life that the harm won’t register anyway.
Tariffs are a regressive tax; it falls most heavily on the poor and working middle class. If you take one of the lead oligarchic sociopaths at his word:
You can deduce that the strategy is to ensure that everyone who is not an oligarch must be driven down economically. I’d bet Thiel and Koch and most of their network feel the same way. Tariffs help them improve their position over everyone else, so they are probably strongly in favor of tariffs.
And upon reflection that makes sense…the tariffs were paid at the point of import and cost passed along to consumers, not paid directly by them in most cases. (The recent change to the de minimis rules (I think I got that right) may seem some consumers paying the tariffs directly, if they can get their purchase out of “customs”).
And any refunds to companies will probably be treated as windfall by the companies and go into executive bonuses while the new, incrementally higher prices stay on the shelves.
It’s going to take some pretty amazing mental gymnastics to do it, seeing as how it’s spelled out very clearly, both in the constitution that gives the congress the tariff power, and the more recent emergency-act legislation. If They do unexpectedly grow a spine and decline the gymnastics, Mike Johnson and the sycophant-House might go the extra mile and give it to him anyway.
So 1/4 of Democrat-appointed judges were in the minority, while 1/3 of Republican-appointed judges sided with the majority. Doesn’t sound to me like playing party politics.
The Stupremes are another matter. Roberts is obsessed with destroying the Voting Rights Act and empowering the rights of legal fictions [corporations as persons] to the max, Goresuch is a chip off the old block or worse, Alito and Thomas are utterly corrupt and fanatical. Kavanaugh is a sick jerk who on rare occasion votes with the honest justices. OTOH, Roberts’ sponsors despise tariffs, and Barrett sometimes joins him to do the right thing.
But Reinsch noted the conservative justices would have to contort themselves into knots in order to find in favor of the president and rule against clearly established constitutional powers.
Awww, look. Another law person who doesn’t believe Originalism is an algorithm for generating a pretext of principle for outcomes predetermined by partisan advantage, ideology or cultural grievance.
